Harvard Business School professor and
Goldman Sachs board member Bill George.

Harvard Business School professor and Goldman Sachs
board memberBill
George is not a fan of Tesla's disclosure practices.

In a tweet
sent out Thursday morning, George disagreed with Tesla CEO
Elon Musk's contention that disclosing the death of a Tesla
driver using the company's auto-pilot feature was "not material"
ahead of the company selling $2 billion in stock.

This dust-up over whether the death of a Tesla Model S driver
using the vehicle's autopilot feature constituted "material
nonpublic information" began on Tuesday when
Fortune's Carol Loomis published an article asking whether
the incident should have been disclosed ahead of the stock sale.

"On the day the news broke about NHTSA's decision to
initiate a preliminary evaluation into the incident, Tesla's
stock traded up, not down, confirming that not only did our
investors know better, but that our own internal assessment of
the performance and risk profile of Autopilot were in line with
market expectations."

Under SEC
rules, companies are required to disclose to shareholders any
material nonpublic information it passes along to other entities.
Reg FD, however, is mostly targeted at information made available
to some shareholders, investors, or individuals
with an ability to profit off this information before the
broader markets knows.

Looking at Tesla's side of the argument, it is clear the company
sees an accident involving one of its vehicles as information
that did not impact — and would not have impacted — an investors'
understanding of the company's business. Seen in this
light, information regarding the accident is not
material.

But in the view of someone who teaches the corporate leaders
of tomorrow about best practices when it comes to
disclosure, this was information shareholders should've had
much more quickly.